Left and Leaving

by Jo Verity

  ‘We do,’ she said. ‘You’re a shit, Gil. A nice one, but all the same a shit. I was very, very angry—’

  ‘And then some. I haven’t dared show my face in that coffee shop.’

  ‘Yes, well. You know I’ve got a temper on me. Now I’ve had time to get used to it, I think it’s good we finished. And I don’t have the energy to stay angry.’ She glanced away and he had a hunch what was coming next. ‘Actually, I’ve met someone. He works with my brother-in-law.’

  Gil remembered the man he’d seen her talking to in the supermarket. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe not wonderful but he’s kind and reliable. He’s got a couple of kids too, so he knows what that’s like.’

  Another loser must have been written across his face because she added ‘His wife died. Breast cancer. We’re taking it slowly but so far…’ she held up a gloved hand to show crossed fingers. ‘You?’

  ‘It’s good. I’m good. It’s all good,’ he said.

  Their falling out had troubled him and he was grateful to her for letting him off the hook. So much so that he bought a bunch of anemones from the stall near the Tube and left them on her doorstep.

  That evening, Janey phoned.

  ‘Polly’s okay?’ he said.

  ‘She’s fine,’ she said. ‘And the boys are fine. They’re all still in bed.’

  ‘So what’s up?’ he said.

  As usual, the time lag punctuated their conversation with silences, no longer than a beat yet enough to dislocate the flow.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ she said.

  ‘Ask away.’

  This time the pause was a little longer.

  ‘Did Polly say anything about not keeping the baby?’

  ‘Not keeping it?’

  ‘She says she’s going to give it up for adoption. She didn’t mention it to you?’

  ‘No. No. Hell. I would have told you. She was apprehensive. Scared that she’d be a bad mother. But you and I talked about that, didn’t we? When did she tell you this?’

  ‘A few days ago,’ she said. ‘You know what a drama queen she is, I assumed she was trying to get attention. But now she says she’s been talking to a social worker.’

  ‘I take it you think she should keep the baby?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s our granddaughter we’re talking about here.’ The old antagonism had crept back into her voice but it was tinged with panic. ‘What are we going to do, Gil?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I need time to get my head around this. I’ll phone you back.’

  Why the hell would Polly do this? She couldn’t think that the child would stand a better chance with a couple of strangers. Janey and Alan were more than willing to give her a safe, loving home, and all the support she needed. When he’d gone to meet Janey for lunch that day she’d seemed quite excited about being involved. Could that be it? Was Polly punishing her mother for – how had she put it? – being ‘so bloody controlling’. Threatening to give the baby away did give her immense power. She had two months to weigh it up – or maybe to wind them up. One thing was for sure, it was her decision.

  When he called back, Janey picked up straight away.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here’s what I think. We have to back off. If we don’t crowd her, I’m sure she’ll come round.

  ‘Are you?’ she said. ‘Well, here’s what I think. She was okay until you turned up. By the way, why did you come?’

  ‘C’mon Janey. I wanted to see—’

  ‘You wanted. You. Did you really think a flying visit from you was going to make everything right? I don’t know what you said, or didn’t say, but she sees you and starts talking about adoption. Coincidence? I don’t think so.’

  ‘I refuse to get into a fight, Janey. You can’t lay this on me.’

  ‘I can and I do. You’re selfish, Gil. I suggest you spend a little time thinking about other people for a change. Daughters are supposed to worship their fathers but Polly despises you. Perhaps you aren’t aware of that.’

  38

  Richard phoned to let Vivian know that he and John were flying to Edinburgh for the weekend. ‘John wants to catch up with friends, and I need to collect a few things. There’s nothing else to be done before the funeral. We’ll be back on Monday morning. Let’s touch base then.’

  She made a plan. While they were away, she would go to Farleigh Road. It might be her only chance to look around before everything was bundled up and dispersed to charity shops or the tip. She might even locate that old address book. She couldn’t say why but its disappearance seemed significant. She considered inviting Gil to go with her. But this visit was about drawing a line and it wouldn’t be right to turn it into an outing.

  ‘I have things I need to do on Saturday,’ she told him when he called. ‘Sunday? We could go for a walk.’

  Richard had been busy in the house. The coats were gone from the hallstand, leaving it naked and anonymous. Tea towels were now in the drawer beneath the draining board. The shoe-cleaning kit was relocated under the stairs. Extra lavatory paper was no longer in the landing cupboard but on the shelf in the bathroom. He had reset the heating, too, and the place was cold.

  The letterbox rattled and she jumped, fearful that her half-brothers had cancelled their plans. When she went into the hall, she found a handful of flyers on the mat but her heart was pounding and, to put her mind at rest, she phoned Richard with a spurious question about funeral flowers.

  ‘How’s Scotland?’ she said.

  ‘Colder than London, if you can imagine that. We’re in Glasgow just now. At my daughter’s.’ On cue, a child began singing in the background.

  ‘Well, enjoy your visit,’ she said, pleased with her newfound surveillance skills.

  She set the heating back on ‘constant’ and wandered through the house, repossessing it. It was impossible to believe that, only six weeks ago, she hadn’t known where her father kept his pyjamas, or which denture cleaner he used, or that he read Westerns.

  The dining table was covered with labelled pocket-files containing correspondence and bills. ‘Gas’, ‘Electricity’, ‘Pension’, ‘Tax’. A dozen or so in all. She was surprised that they’d been left out like this, but when she looked inside, she saw that the documents were all photocopies.

  She turned her attention to the missing address book, scanning shelves and rummaging through drawers. There was no reason to think he’d hidden it so, if it were in the house, it shouldn’t be hard to find. Drawing a blank in the dining room, she tried the sitting room and then the kitchen. Nothing. In all probability, he’d got rid of it (although that did seem a strange thing to do).

  The filing cabinet in the junk room was locked but the silver key opened it as she’d known it would. A riffle through the suspended pockets released a not unpleasant whiff of pencil-sharpenings and damp paper, but none of them held anything as bulky as a book.

  She moved on to the bedrooms. Richard’s objectionable Fair Isle sweater was on the back of the chair in her father’s room but, apart from that and a towelling dressing gown, he appeared to have taken everything with him. John had changed the bedding in ‘her’ room and her linen lay neatly folded on a chair. She’d neither seen nor spoken to John during their father’s hospitalisation (or, in fact since their mother’s funeral). She remembered him as being taller and more reserved than his older brother but it had become easier to lump them together and picture him as a clone of Richard.

  A search of both rooms produced nothing unexpected except, in the bottom of the wardrobe, an album containing holiday snaps of a couple with two young boys. The man – clearly recognisable as her father – looked to be in his thirties. The surprising thing was that the whole family was laughing. She eased a few photographs out of the old-fashioned mounts, but there was nothing to indicate where or when they’d been taken. Replacing them, she returned the album to the wardrobe, vaguely affronted that her father had kept no equivalent record of his second family.

 
Before abandoning her search, she gave the filing cabinet one more try, this time starting at the end of the alphabet and taking a closer look at the documents – the originals of the ones downstairs – contained in each buff-coloured pocket. ‘Water’, ‘Tax’, ‘Pension’, ‘Mortgage’ (paid off thirty years ago yet the paperwork still all there), ‘Marriage’. Marriage?

  ‘Marriage’ contained two certificates. The first recorded the marriage of Philip Frederick Carey to Elspeth Mary Jamieson at St Brides Church, Dumfries, on 16th April, 1949. (Elspeth hadn’t taken it with her as a memento, then.) The second showed that Philip Frederick Carey had married Anneliese Birgit Krüger at Wandsworth Register Office on 21st March, 1974.

  Vivian frowned. No, no, no. Her parents were married in 1973 and she was born fifteen months later. Her birth certificate proving this was locked in her desk drawer.

  She sat on the top stair, checking and rechecking the date. She’d imagined her parents’ courtship to have been a conventional business – engagement, marriage, sex. In that order. It seemed she was mistaken. Premarital sex implied passion. Lust. Now that had never figured in her imaginings. What she’d always thought had been her parents’ selfish decision to have a child had, within the space of minutes, become something entirely different. She had not been an old man’s indulgence but an accident. A slip up.

  Had they married for love or because her mother was pregnant? She couldn’t imagine her mother blackmailing her father into it. He belonged to a generation for whom ‘failing to do the decent thing’, was unthinkable. Perhaps he couldn’t face the shame.

  She made a quick calculation. Richard had been twenty-three, John twenty when she was born. They must have known their father was remarrying but had they known his new, young wife was pregnant?

  When she was seven or eight, confined to bed with something or another, to occupy her, her mother had produced her wedding photographs. They were little more than snaps, and she remembered being disappointed that there had been no flounced white dress and no veil. She closed her eyes, trying to see them again. Her parents were standing in front of a big, grey building. Her mother wore a kaftan – blue, patterned with yellow flowers – and a white hat with a floppy brim. She was holding a bouquet of sunflowers. A kaftan. Perfect camouflage.

  She folded the certificate and put it in her pocket then locked the filing cabinet.

  Before leaving she checked that everything was as she’d found it – the central heating controls (‘timed’); the lavatory seat (up); the back door (locked). Glancing out of the kitchen window, she saw that all that remained of the snowman was a mound of ice. The next time she stood here, her father would be a mound of ashes.

  Gil wasted ten minutes in the bookshop, timing his arrival for eleven on the dot.

  When Vivian opened the door, she was wearing her coat and gloves. ‘We’ll get coffee on the way,’ she said.

  No kiss. No ‘I’m glad you’re back’. Only the suggestion of a smile, then straight in as though he’d returned after collecting something from another room. He wondered whether it was her way of concealing emotion.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said.

  Snow still hung about in odd corners and crevices but the pavements were clear. They walked along in silence, she almost outpacing him with her long-legged stride, he working hard to keep up. He’d grown accustomed to her silences but this one seemed excessive.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but it’s not what you think.’

  He caught her hand and they stopped walking. ‘And what do I think?’

  ‘You think I’m upset because my father died.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘C’mon,’ he said, pointing to the coffee shop on the far side of the road.

  It was one of those fancy places where coffee was overpriced and the staff were patronising, but it was warm and he needed to get to the bottom of this.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said bracing himself for news that she was ill or had lost her job. When she told him that her parents had been married for only three months when she was born, he almost laughed. But she was obviously shaken.

  ‘That was an awfully long time ago,’ he said. ‘Does it really matter?’

  ‘How can you even ask that? They let me think I was planned. Wanted. But I wasn’t.’

  ‘You’re being a bit harsh. They got married and stayed married. They wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t wanted you, or cared for each other.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ she said.

  The penny dropped. It was her mother’s role in this that she was finding so hard to handle.

  ‘Maybe she didn’t think it was important.’

  She glared at him.

  ‘I know how much you admired your mother,’ he said, ‘but she was human, Vivian. You have to allow her that.’

  They sat, looking everywhere but at each other. He didn’t have the energy for this. He’d barely slept after the conversations with Janey. Thirty-something years ago, her parents had jumped the gun. So what? If she were determined to get steamed up about something, kids in Africa were dying of malaria. The planet was heating up. Polly was going to give his granddaughter away.

  He stood up. ‘Look. I’ll head off home now. You’ve got things on your mind. We can do this some other time.’

  He’d gone a couple of hundred yards by the time she caught up with him.

  ‘Can we pretend that never happened?’ she said.

  ‘What never happened?’ he said, slightly disappointed in himself for capitulating so readily.

  She pushed her arm through his and they continued up the hill, commenting on window displays and hideous dogs and ridiculous hats, in an attempt to salvage their morning. But something had shifted – only slightly, yet enough to make him feel apprehensive.

  At the junction of Gayton Road and Well Walk, the road widened. Yellow-brick terraces gave way to imposing, red-brick houses with pillared entrances and elaborate pediments. Magnificent London planes lined wide, raised pavements. They crossed the road and followed a well-worn path on to the Heath. This was a popular weekend destination – understandable considering that the majority of Londoners had no access to a garden. Clearly Vivian was familiar with the paths and tracks criss-crossing the Heath and she took the lead. The ground was still frozen and pockets of snow remained here and there. Scruffy, leafless trees and thickets of brambles lined their route. The track became narrower until they were forced to walk in single file and soon all that proved they weren’t the only people left in the world was the distant shriek of a child and the occasional barking of a dog.

  They’d been walking for ten minutes or so when the track opened into a clearing in the centre of which stood a massive tree.

  ‘I thought you’d like this,’ she said, pointing to its trunk.

  At first he thought it was lichen but, as he got closer, he saw that the grey, circular patch, about two feet in diameter, consisted of gobs of chewing gum. He looked up into the branches of the craggy tree. ‘It’s an oak isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. The locals call it “the gum tree.”’

  ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘Stick your gum on the tree and make a wish.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ he said.

  She pulled a pack of chewing gum from her pocket and held it out.

  He had no idea why she’d brought him here, but seeing as she had, he might as well put on a show. Taking a stick of gum from the pack, he chewed methodically then placed the resulting gobbet of at the top of the circle and pushed it into the bark. With his thumb still on it, he closed his eyes, as a child would. Don’t make me choose between them.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘Wishes are for dreamers.’

  ‘You must have made wishes when you were a kid.’

  ‘Yes. But they never came true.’

  Leaving the unkempt woodland, they rejoined the Sunday stro
llers and continued north towards Kenwood House.

  ‘What’s happening about Irene?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s gone quiet. But Kevin’s heard a rumour that she’s pulled this kind of stunt before. Some poor sod at Barts. I don’t know the exact circumstances.’

  ‘That’s appalling.’ She paused. ‘I tried to get in touch with her when you were away. I thought maybe I could persuade her to withdraw her accusation.’

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ he said. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Her phone kept going to voicemail. And she hasn’t replied to my messages or texts.’

  ‘That’s not like our Irene,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what I thought. In the end I phoned her office.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She hasn’t been to work since before Christmas,’ she said.

  ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘They said they couldn’t give me any details.’ She paused. ‘So I wrote to her. I used the excuse of telling her about my father. Don’t worry. I didn’t mention you.’

  ‘Did she reply?’ he said.

  ‘Not so far, which I find unnerving. Death’s an open goal for her. I expected to be inundated with scratch-and-sniff tracts and pithy epigrams. But nothing. Irene gone to ground is more disturbing than Irene on the rampage.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I wonder whether we should have been more—’

  ‘We’ve both had a lot of stuff going on, Vivian,’ he said.

  ‘I know. And she really is a dreadful woman. All the same—’

  ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘She has a sister. She has work colleagues. She has her beloved minister and his posse of holy rollers. Irene Tovey has a whole gang of people looking out for her. She’ll be okay.’

  ‘Mmmm. I suppose you’re right,’ she said.

  Vivian’s uncertainty was out of character. But she’d been through an ordeal during the past weeks. Hospital visiting. Watching her father’s deterioration and his death. And she still had to face the funeral. The odd wobble was understandable. (It would also account for her overreaction to the birth certificate.)